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The documentary ‘Babies’ documents the development of four newborns from different parts of the world ranging from Namibia to Mongolia, Japan and America. It depicts the child’s development processes and how cultural, social, emotional, and family ties play a crucial role. The documentary has no voice over narration, but we see sparse dialogue throughout its duration, which allowed the audience to pay close attention to the development of the babies and their interactions with the surroundings.
It can be observed that Ponijao and Bayar lived in ‘poverty’ conditions, as compared to their more well-off counterparts Mari and Hattie, who lived privileged lives in Japan and America. This aspect displayed the differences in cultures and socio-economic status. However, it should be noted that, despite the socio-cultural differences, the same degree of love and affection was being showered on the babies. The differences in status did not affect the level of love the mothers showered on their babies.
However, there were vivid distinctions in the ways, the mothers displayed affection on the four babies. For instance, Ponijao, a Namibian girl, was allowed to crawl around, eat dirt, drink water from the river and put anything and everything in her mouth that her little hands came in contact with. Ponijao was always seen on her mother's lap or crawling around the area rather than being swaddled like her counterparts. Ponijao’s mother was attentive to her needs but at the same time she did not interfere in her process of discovering herself. Hattie and Mari were living a more privileged life compared to their counterparts. Their parents worked hard in order to enrich their children’s lives and bless them with the same privilege they were born with. Ponijao wandered around on the ground all day long out of curiosity and started to learn and adapt to her surroundings. She started to learn how to walk and talk without the privilege of reading books and writing and being forced to imitate animal noises in order to understand the differences. Despite her not being privileged, we witnessed that she developed just as prudently as Hattie did during her development process.
The documentary ‘Babies’ did not aim to show the differences in supervision, or the famous ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate but instead placed emphasis on how different roads of development could lead to the same destination.
Erik Erikson used the psychosocial theory to explain the term ‘identity crisis’. He defined the first step as ‘trust vs. mistrust’, which is experienced, from the ages of 0-1 years of age. He stated that new born are completely dependent on their caregiver to fulfill their basic needs for survival. He explained that the way a child builds the concept of trust depends on the way someone satisfies his needs and cares for him. If the baby is given less attention and is not adhered to, the baby will develop a sense of mistrust. However, this was not seen in the case of Ponijao, whose mother although was less attentive to her, but always made sure she was around her and took into account of her whereabouts. We did not see an element of distrust in the baby maybe because the close proximity to which the mother was giving the baby the assurance of warmth and love. The second stage is ‘autonomy vs. doubt’, which appears at the age of 1-3 years. At this age the child begins to explore his environment by the support and encouragement provided by his parents. This was evident in the case of Ponijao, however the other babies lacked this aspect and this may have created doubt in the child in their capacity to do things and may be reluctant to try new experiences in the future. Bayar had very little interaction with his parents and was often isolated. This may cause him to feel isolated and withdrawn from society in his later years in life, according to Erik.
Moreover, Ainswirth’s ‘strange situation’ theory of attachment styles can be used to explain why Bayar felt upset when his mother tried to breastfeed him. He did not build the connection with his mother at a young age and this goes on to further explain the avoidant attachment issue. Children with an avoidant attached tend to become distant with their caregivers and learn to avoid seeking help and may grow up to avoid other people in general. On the flip side, Mari and Hattie would always be in some sort of contact with people, and would often find themselves surrounded with other babies in classes where they would sing and interact with one another. These examples showed the cognitive development of the babies in the documentary and how each child had a different environment to interact with.
This documentary showed major culture differences in the child’s development processes. The four babies grew up in completely different environments with different socio-economic backgrounds. Hattie and Mari played with actual toys as babies because they were brought up in industrialized cities where they had easy access to material goods. Whereas, on the other hand, Bayar and Ponijao played with animals on the fields and were in contact with nature. They never had materialistic goods as compared to Hattie and Mari. They explored and learnt through their own mistakes of trial and error.
This documentary showed that despite having significant cultural and social differences, the road to development is more or less the same. The babies develop in the same way by starting to crawl and then eventually beginning to walk and talk. Some begin to develop faster and quicker, but eventually the rest catch up walking and talking. When Bayar was born his mother would wrap him in a cloth which affected his physical development and he turned out to be the slowest baby. The point to be noted is that environmental factors can only affect the rate at which a baby develops. As the California Department of Education explains, the social emotional development of a child looks at child’s experience, expression, and management of emotions and the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others. Each child’s temperament, or reactivity and self-regulation showed from the time they were born.
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